All posts tagged Tests

As business schools cast a wider net for new students, the GRE test is helping them hook historians, philosophers and literature majors.

Hopeful M.B.A.s have long used the Graduate Management Admissions Test, an assessment of verbal, quantitative and analytical capabilities, to gain admission into B-school. But the GRE, which also measures verbal and quantitative reasoning, is gaining in popularity among applicants, according to the Educational Testing Service, which administers the test.

About one in five applicants to Yale School of Management this year submitted GRE scores, double the rate the school saw back in 2010, according to W. Bruce DelMonico, the school’s assistant dean and admissions director. And at University of Texas, Austin’s McCombs School of Business, 14% of full-time M.B.A. applicants submitted GRE scores this year, up from 10% for the class that started two years earlier and is graduating this spring. Read More »

First, the bad news: Nearly 75% of 2013 high school graduates who took the ACT college readiness exam aren’t fully prepared for college, according to a new report by the organization that administers the test.

Now, the (moderately) good: Student performance has improved slightly since 2009, when just 23% of high school graduates tested met all four of the exam’s benchmarks for college readiness, compared with 26% this year.

The report, out Wednesday from the ACT, shows that American high school students are making slow progress toward college readiness and raises concerns about whether they’ll have the skills necessary to fill jobs in the future, said Jon Erickson, president of educational division of the ACT.

More than half of all 2013 high school graduates in the U.S. took the exam, which assesses proficiency in English, reading, math and science.

Nearly two-thirds of test-takers failed to achieve two or more of the four benchmarks for college readiness, and on the test’s science section, just over a third of students met the benchmark.

The results reveal wide gaps between what students hope to achieve and their abilities in key subject areas, Mr. Erickson said. Read More »

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